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This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Written by University of Oxford student Pablo Neira
If the interests of sentient animals matter, then there are (at least pro tanto) reasons to prevent the harms they suffer. There are many different natural harms that wild animals suffer, including hunger, disease, parasitism and extreme weather conditions (Singer 1975; Clark 1979; Sapontzis 1984; Cowen 2003; Fink 2005; Simmons 2009; Horta 2010; McMahan 2010; Ebert and Mavhan 2012; Keulartz 2016; Palmer 2013; Sözmen 2013; Bruers 2015; Tomasik 2015; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021; Johannsen 2021). One of these (on which I will focus in this paper) is the suffering caused by predation. Predation is an antagonistic relationship in which a predator obtains energy by consuming a prey animal—either wholly or partially—which is alive when it is attacked (Begon et al. 2006, 266). The harms predation cause to prey animals can vary greatly, depending on the kind of injuries they suffer in the process and how painful they are, the amount of time it takes them to die, the release of endorphins that reduce pain or the extent to which psychological suffering—mostly distress—affects them during the process. In addition, beyond the pain of predation itself, there are other substantial harms related to predation. It has been argued that death itself may harm animals because it deprives them of any possible future positive experiences (Nagel 1970; Višak and Garner 2016). However, we do not need to agree that death harms animals in order to consider predation a harm, as the suffering it causes to animals is sufficient in its own right. Moreover, some animals may survive predation and yet suffer serious injuries that cause them pain for a prolonged period of time, sometimes chronically (Schoener 1979; Engh et al. 2006; Jonhson et al. 2006). They may also live in fear of being attacked by predators (Lima 1998; Holbrook and Schmitt 2002; Mashoodh 2009). Thus, the pain experienced by sentient animals when they are attacked in nature should not be overlooked. In this essay, I will argue that it is permissible, and perhaps obligatory, to intervene to prevent predation. Moreover, if we accept this, it leads us to consider predation prevention as a cause area to take action seriously from Effective Altruism.
Predation: A Thought Experiment
Consider the following thought experiment:
Trapped Animals. An antelope is trapped between branches and abandoned by its herd. A hyena finds the antelope and begins to devour different parts of its body while it is still alive. This lasts several hours, until the antelope finally dies. Anna is near the antelope and, without placing herself in danger, could untangle the branches so the antelope could escape.
According to some deontological or virtue ethics perspectives,[1] it can be argued that Anna’s intervention would be incorrect. This position can be defended by arguing that there is a rule that prevents intervention or that it is not virtuous to intervene. The idea that we should prevent predation may seem odd and wrong to some people at first. At the same time, based on other deontological approaches, we may have positive duties to animals (including wild ones), which we would fail to honour if we do not aid them when they are in need. Similarly, based on some virtue approaches, refusing to help animals would be contrary to what a virtuous person would do. In fact, that seems to be the case if we do not help the antelope here. Meanwhile, according to a consequentialist perspective, if Anna intervenes she would be acting in the correct manner, as long as her action leads to the best possible consequences all things considered. A counterargument could be that if we save the antelope, the hyena will starve, and thus Anna would be harming the hyena. This supports people’s intuition against preventing predation. However, consider the following alternative:
Trapped Animals 2. The situation is the same as in Trapped Animals, except that Anna is physically close to the antelope, and, without exposing herself to danger, she could place a vegetable meat alternative on the ground with identical characteristics to antelope meat. The hyena would eat this alternative and leave the antelope unharmed. Anna could then untangle the branches so the antelope could escape.
In this case, again, a consequentialist perspective would imply that if Anna intervenes, she will act correctly, as the best outcome will be achieved all things considered. Deontological and virtue ethics arguments could reach a similar conclusion, as we saw in the Trapped Animals case. Therefore, our initial intuition against preventing predation may be shown to be misguided simply by introducing a small modification to the scenario. This is because our intuition against predation may still be present when we consider this case, despite the fact that all relevant considerations would lead us to conclude that we should save the antelope. In addition, our intuition against preventing predation could also be challenged by the following variant of the same case:
Trapped Animals 3. Everything is the same as in Trapped Animals 2, except that instead of an antelope it is a human being that is trapped.
When we include a human in the scenario, our intuition changes significantly. It no longer seems merely permissible but obligatory for Anna to act. It could be argued that this has no relevance for the previous cases, as there is a crucial difference between wild animals and humans. Indeed, it has been argued that wild animals possess certain capacities that allow them to use their natural abilities to survive, while humans do not (Simmons 2009, 19–21). However, this objection does not seem to work, as in the cases we are considering both the human being and the nonhuman animal will surely die if Anna does not act. Thus, the antelope cannot adequately deal with the threat. So, if we are not speciesist, it seems we should hold a similar position in all cases.
This conclusion is further reinforced by the following case:
Trapped Animals 4. Everything is the same as in Trapped Animals 2, except that Anna is a biologist and knows that the antelope has a highly contagious disease. If the hyena eats it, this disease could infect other mammals, including humans.
Again, in this case it seems that it would not only permissible but obligatory for Anna to act. But, it is not clear whether there is a relevant difference between this case and the previous ones. We can only claim that there is if we maintain that the interests of humans are important in a way in which the interests of other beings are not.
Practical Implications: The Case for Effective Altruists
We may also conclude that this is an important cause, considering (as effective altruists do) its scale, neglectedness and tractability (Singer 2016, 19–20; MacAskill 2019, 12–15; Timmerman 2019, 166–68; Berkey 2020, 368–70). Regarding the scale, it is difficult to determine the exact number of wild animals that exist,[2] although we can estimate that the number is vast. Most suffer due to natural factors, and many are killed by predators. The overall amount of pain will be several orders of magnitude greater if we consider a long-term perspective, as the number of sentient animals that will live in the future is likely to be greater than the number of sentient animals that are alive now and have lived in the past as a whole. As for neglectedness, it is evident that this topic (and that of wild animal suffering in general) has received very little attention from animal charities or other organisations (for an exception, see Animal Ethics 2020). Finally, regarding tractability, there are different courses of action that could be implemented to prevent predation. I will now consider four of them. The first two are more speculative, and their expected results would need to be researched in far more detail before they could be implemented, which should first occur through pilot programmes. Meanwhile, the third and the fourth ones could be applied immediately and are much less controversial.
First, it has been argued that resources could be devoted to researching how to perform interventions similar to the natural evolution that led to the herborisation of some previously predatory species (e.g. the giant panda). This could be done by genetically modifying predators so that their offspring gradually becomes herbivorous, consequently changing their predatory behaviour (Pearce 2009; Palmer 2013; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021; Johannsen 2021).
Second, resources could be devoted to organising the gradual extinction of predatory species (Pearce 2009; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021), for example, by administering contraceptives to predators and allowing them to gradually disappear. Depot-contraception (a form of contraceptive injection that prevents ovulation in females) could be administered to carnivores, causing predatory animals to disappear within a few generations, and the resulting population effects on predated spices could be managed through more selective forms of contraception. Such advanced contraceptive techniques could be controlled by computer programs, which would be tested first on a small scale and then applied on a larger scale.
Third, the resources currently used to promote the conservation of predators (which are sometimes significant) could be allocated elsewhere, potentially having a better impact, while allowing the predators to disappear naturally (Cowen 2003).
Fourth, reforestation plans could be designed so the resulting ecosystems contain less rather than more predation. Different types of plants can support different types of animals. Accordingly, we could choose to plant types of vegetation that are less likely to support predators (Animal Ethics 2020).
If the arguments made in the previous sections are correct, then all the courses of action indicated above should be considered acceptable. However, many people will find this counterintuitive in the first two cases, despite the arguments presented above. Nevertheless, the latter two approaches could be considered acceptable by anyone willing to give at least some weight to the interests of wild animals. This means that preventing predation is tractable, at least in some ways.
Conclusion
I have argued that intervening to prevent harms to animals resulting from predation is morally right. Those who argue that we should not act in cases of predation must rely on ad hoc responses to intervention in scenarios in which such action seems to be the right choice. Admittedly, this will likely be a counterintuitive conclusion for many people, although the arguments I have presented appear to imply it. However, while some of the approaches for preventing predation may appear contrary to intuition, that is not true for all of them.
Notes:
[1] It could be also be defended from a rights perspective, wild animals can certainly harm each other, but they cannot violate the rights of others (Regan 1983; Jamieson 1990; Cohen 1997; Milburn 2015); of capacities, the capacity of specific species to flower, requiring a type of predation (Nussbaum 2006; Schlosberg, 2006; Cripps 2010); or of the community of animals, as it is reasonable to assume that wild animals are fully competent to address the challenges they face (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011).
[2] Specifically, there are estimated to be 1011–4·1011 birds, 1011–1012 mammals, 1011–1014 reptiles, 1011–1014 amphibians, 1013–1015 fish, 1014–1017 earthworms 1014–1017 mites, 1015–1018 polyps, 1017–1019 terrestrial arthropods, 1017–1019 rotifers, 1019 gastrotrichs, 1018 copepods and 1020–1022 nematodes (Tomasik 2019).
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There is a kind of relentless contrarian that is very smart, has voracious reading habits, is funny, and ends up in race science and eugenics. You are familiar with the type. Luckily, analytic philosophy also generates different contrarians about its own methods and projects that try to develop more promising (new) paths than these. Contemporary classics in this latter genre are Michael Della Rocca’s (2020) The Parmenidean Ascent, Nathan Ballantyne’s (2019) Knowing Our Limits, and Elijah Millgram’s (2015) The Great Endarkenment all published with Oxford. In the service of a new or start (sometimes presented as a recovery of older wisdom), each engages with analytic philosophy’s self-conception(s), its predominate methods (Della Rocca goes after reflective equilibrium, Millgram after semantic analysis, Ballantyne after the supplements the method of counter example), and the garden paths and epicycles we’ve been following. Feel free to add your own suggestions to this genre.
Millgram and Ballantyne both treat the cognitive division of labor as a challenge to how analytic philosophy is done with Ballantyne opting for extension from what we have and Millgram opting for (partially) starting anew (about which more below). I don’t think I have noticed any mutual citations. Ballantyne, Millgram, and Della Rocca really end up in distinct even opposing places. So, this genre will not be a school.
Millgram’s book, which is the one that prompted this post, also belongs to the small category of works that one might call ‘Darwinian Aristotelianism,’ that is, a form of scientific naturalism that takes teleological causes of a sort rather seriously within a broadly Darwinian approach. Other books in this genre are Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back (which analyzes it in terms of reasons without a reasoner), and David Haig’s From Darwin to Derrida (which relies heavily on the type/token distinction in order to treat historical types as final causes). The latter written by an evolutionary theorist.* There is almost no mutual citation in these works (in fact, Millgram himself is rather fond of self-citation despite reading widely). C. Thi Nguyen’s (2020) Games: Agency as Art may also be thought to fit this genre, but Millgram is part of his scaffolding, and Nguyen screens off his arguments from philosophical anthropology and so leave it aside here. So much for set up, let me quote its concluding paragraphs of Millgram’s book:
Perhaps eventually an overall Big Picture will emerge—and perhaps not: Hegel thought that the Owl of Minerva would take wing only at dusk (i.e., that we will only achieve understanding in retrospect, after it’s all over), but maybe the Owl’s wings have been broken by hyperspecialization, and it will never take to the air at all. What we can reasonably anticipate in the short term is a patchwork of inference management techniques, along with intellectual devices constructed to support them. One final observation: in the Introduction, I gave a number of reasons for thinking that our response to the Great Endarkenment is something that we can start working on now, but that it would be a mistake at this point to try to produce a magic bullet meant to fix its problems. That turns out to be correct for yet a further reason. Because the approach has to be bottom-up and piecemeal, at present we have to suffice with characterizing the problem and with taking first steps; we couldn’t possibly be in a position to know what the right answers are.
Thus far our institutional manifesto. Analytic philosophy has bequeathed to us a set of highly refined skills. The analytic tradition is visibly at the end of its run. But those skills can now be redirected and put in the service of a new philosophical agenda. In order for this to take place, we will have to reshape our philosophical pedagogy—and, very importantly, the institutions that currently have such a distorting effect on the work of the philosophers who live inside them. However, as many observers have noticed, academia is on the verge of a period of great institutional fluidity, and flux of this kind is an opportunity to introduce new procedures and incentives. We had better take full advantage of it.–Elijah Millgram (2015) The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization, p. 281
I had glanced at Millgram’s book when I wrote my piece on synthetic philosophy, but after realizing that his approach to the advanced cognitive division of labor was orthogonal to my own set it aside then. But after noticing intriguing citations to it in works by C. Thi Nguyen and Neil Levy, I decided to read it anyway. The Great Endarkenment is a maddening book because the first few chapters and the afterward are highly programmatic and accessible, while the bulk of the essays involve ambitious, revisionary papers in meta-ethics, metaphysics, and (fundementally) moral psychology (or practical agency if that is a term). The book also has rather deep discussions of David Lewis, Mill, and Bernard Williams. The parts fit together, but only if you look at them in a certain way, and only if you paid attention in all the graduate seminars you attended.
Millgram’s main claim in philosophical anthropology is that rather than being a rational animal, mankind is a serial hyperspecializing animal or at least in principle capable of hyperspecializing serially (switching among different specialized niches it partially constructs itself). The very advanced cognitive division of labor we find ourselves in is, thus, not intrinsically at odds with our nature but actually an expression of it (even if Millgram can allow that it is an effect of economic or technological developments, etc.). If you are in a rush you can skip the next two asides (well at least the first).
As an aside, first, lurking in Millgram’s program there is, thus, a fundamental critique of the Evolutionary Psychology program that takes our nature as adapted to and relatively fixed by niches back in the distant ancestral past. I don’t mean to suggest Evolutionary Psychology is incompatible with Millgram’s project, but it’s fundamental style of argument in its more prominent popularizations is.
Second, and this aside is rather important to my own projects, Millgram’s philosophical anthropology is part of the account of human nature that liberals have been searching for. And, in fact, as the quoted passages reveal, Millgram’s sensibility is liberal in more ways, including his cautious preference for “bottom-up and piecemeal” efforts to tackle the challenge of the Great Endarkenment.+
Be that as it may, the cognitive division of labor and hyperspecialization is also a source of trouble. Specialists in different fields are increasingly unable to understand and thus evaluate the quality of each other’s work including within disciplines. As Millgram notes this problem has become endemic within the institution most qualified to do so — the university — and as hyper-specialized technologies and expertise spread through the economy and society. This is also why society’s certified generalists — journalists, civil servants, and legal professionals — so often look completely out of their depth when they have to tackle your expertise under time pressure.** It’s his diagnosis of this state of affairs that has attracted, I think, most scholarly notice (but that may be a selection effect on my part by my engagement with Levy’s Bad Beliefs and Nguyen’s Games). Crucially, hyperspecialiation also involves the development of languages and epistemic practices that are often mutually unintelligible and perhaps even metaphysically incompatible seeming.
As an aside that is really an important extension of Millgram’s argument: because the book was written just before the great breakthroughs in machine learning were becoming known and felt, the most obvious version of the challenge (even danger) he is pointing to is not really discussed in the book: increasingly we lack access to the inner workings of the machines we rely on (at least in real time), and so there is a non-trivial sense in which if he is right the challenge posed by Great Endarkenment is accelerating. (See here for an framework developed with Federica Russo and Jean Wagemans to analyze and handle that problem.)
That is, if Millgram is right MacAskill and his friends who worry about the dangers of AGI taking things over for rule and perhaps our destruction by the machine(s) have it backwards. The odds are more likely that our society will implode and disperse — like the tower of Babel that frames Millgram’s analysis — by itself. And that if it survives mutual coordination by AGIs will be just as hampered by the Great Endarkenment, perhaps even more so due to their path dependencies, as ours is.
I wanted to explore the significance of this to professional philosophy (and also hint more at the riches of the book), but the post is long enough and I could stop here. So, I will return to that in the future. Let me close with an observation. As Millgram notes, in the sciences mutual unintelligibility is common. And the way it is often handled is really two-fold: first, as Peter Galison has argued, and Millgram notes, the disciplines develop local pidgins in what Galison calls their ‘trading zones.’ This births the possibility of mutually partially overlapping areas of expertise in (as Michael Polanyi noted) the republic of science. Millgram is alert to this for he treats a lot of the areas that have been subject of recent efforts at semantic analysis by philosophers (knowledge, counterfactuals, normativity) as (to simplify) really tracking and trailing the alethic certification of past pidgins. Part of Millgram’s own project is to diagnose the function of such certification, but also help design new cognitive machinery to facilitate mutual intelligibility. That’s exciting! This I hope to explore in the future.
Second, as I have emphasized in my work on synthetic philosophy, there are reasonably general theories and topic neutralish (mathematical and experimental) techniques that transcend disciplines (Bayesianism, game theory, darwinism, actor-network, etc.). On the latter (the techniques) these often necessetate local pidgins or, when possible, textbook treatments. On the former, while these general theories are always applied differently locally, they are also conduits for mutual intelligibility. (Millgram ignores this in part.) As Millgram notes, philosophers can make themselves useful here by getting MAs in other disciplines and so facilitate mutual communication as they already do. That is to say, and this is a criticism, while there is a simultaneous advancement in the cognitive division of labor that deepens mutual barriers to intelligibility, some of this advance generates possibilities of arbitrage (I owe the insight to Liam Kofi Bright) also accrues to specialists that help transcend local mutual intelligibility.** So, what he takes to be a call to arms is already under way. So, let’s grant we’re on a precipice, but the path out is already marked.++
This post was published first at D&I with modest changes.
*Because of this Millgram is able to use the insights of the tradition of neo-thomism within analytic philosophy to his own ends without seeming to be an Anscombe groupie or hinting darkly that we must return to the path of philosophical righteousness.
+This liberal resonance is not wholly accidental; there are informed references to and discussions of Hayek.
** Spare a thought for humble bloggers, by the way.
++UPDATE: As Justin Weinberg reminded me, Millgram did a series of five guest posts at DailyNous on themes from his book (here are the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth entries.) I surely read these, and encourage you to read them if you want the pidgin version of his book.
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